Série "Internacionalismo é"

Bismarck's Warning

"One thing is certain: an attempt to create an independent "Kosova" is illegal. There are more around the world besides Belgrade and Moscow that oppose it. Washington has violated international law on many occasions; indeed, the assault on then-Yugoslavia in 1999 was perhaps the most flagrant. But this is not 1999; and even that war stopped short of an outright land grab.

If the Albanian separatists declare their "independence," on December 10 or any time thereafter, recognition of that would be just the "damn fool thing in the Balkans" Bismarck had warned about. The first time it unleashed the cataclysm of 1914. What will it do now?

If you answer "nothing," that's precisely what the kings and emperors had said back then." Nebojsa Malic

* this is not 1999; President Wilsons Fourteen Points the device that was allegedly meant to end the war in early 1918 espoused the principle of self-determination. It threw a revolutionary doctrine at an already exhausted Europe, a doctrine almost on par with Bolshevism in its destabilizing effect. It unleashed competing aspirations among the smaller nations of Central Europe and the Balkans that not only hastened the collapse of transnational empires, but also gave rise to a host of intractable ethnic conflicts and territorial disputes that remain unresolved to this day. But being a good liberal, Wilson did not allow realities on the ground to get in the way of his creativity. His concepts of an "enlarging democracy" and "collective security" signaled the birth of a view of Americas role in world affairs which has created and is still creating endless problems for both America and the world. It is Wilson speaking through President George W. Bush who declared, only a week ago, that America not only "created the conditions in which new democracies could flourish" but "also provided inspiration for oppressed peoples."

Two decades after Wilson, burdened by Clemenceaus untenable revenge of Versailles, Europe staggered into a belated Round Two of self-destruction. Before 1939 it was badly wounded; after 1945 mortally so. The result is a civilization that is aborting and birth-controlling itself to death, that is morally bankrupt, culturally spent, and spiritually comatose. We are living if life it is�the consequences of what had ended on that November morning at Compiegne.